


Nothing, Here

by kremisiusaclassi



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, Child Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kremisiusaclassi/pseuds/kremisiusaclassi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief in art is seen as transcendent. Suffering, and sacrifice, as holy. There is nothing transcendent, here. Nothing holy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing, Here

**Author's Note:**

> This world needed a fic that treated the Longs with some respect.

They say you should be prepared for death. In this world it is inescapable. It is a fact. It is the inevitability by which we set our watches.

The traders carry shovels where they go and bury the dead.

They say you should prepare yourself. They do not say to prepare your child. Prepare yourself for death. Accept that you will die, as sure as the sun will set. Tell your son that you will die, but only when he's old enough to understand.

If he's not old enough to understand death when he dies you dig two graves: one for your child and one for the man that killed him.

When he's not old enough to understand death you hold him and pray and realize no one is listening and no one can do anything. 

You are trapped by incompetence and inability. 

You are nothing and capable of nothing.

This world preyed on what you were.

You were filled with love. You forgot that death loomed in the shadows. You forgot it crept beneath the bed. It preys on you - if you are full of love, it empties you of it with claws and bullets. 

Losing love is the blood on your hands as you press them to the wound you know won't close.

Losing love is the bile in your throat and the shovel in your hand.

Losing love is staring at the grave of your son and wishing it was larger and your own.

You are empty of love, and in its place is nothing that can be used or taken. The anger burns and is fed by dreams and harsh air and overturning dirt that reminds you of digging a small grave.

If you are nothing, nothing at all but fire, nothing can touch you without being burned.

If you are fire, you aren't prey.

When you bury your son, the sun sets and turns the sky as bloody as your hands. You find no poetry.

There is no epiphany. 

The dirt is dirt. 

The blood is your son's blood. 

No wisdom comes to you from this loss.

The fact of death is that it rips your heart from you and in its place is nothing but the empty reminder that something was there.

There is no poetry here.

The grief does not feel euphoric. It feels like death and two graves that should have been yours.

There is no such thing as meaningful suffering.


End file.
